


and you’ve whispered what I’m worth

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Ableism, Cersei is like a really hot Immortan Joe, F/M, Jaime and Brienne are both Max and Furiosa at the same time, Jon and Sansa are sort of Nux and Capable, Mad Max Fury Road AU, Minor/Background Cersei and Jaime, POV Jaime Lannister, also not a super dany-friendly story, and he has a lot of thoughts about his missing hand, its just heavily implied throughout, jaime is that screenshot of janet from the good place chanting top me, mention of sexual slavery, minor/background Jon/Sansa, not a super cersei-friendly story, not that he outwardly admits to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-03-19 20:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18977761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Mad Max: Fury Road AU. After losing his hand as punishment for killing the Mad King, Jaime is demoted to Imperator: a glorified driver for Queen Cersei. He's out on a gas run when his rig is hijacked by a woman who claims she's rescuing a bunch of beautiful noble girls from Cersei's clutches.





	1. Kingslayer

**Author's Note:**

> This probably won't be very long. Two or three additional chapters. I got the idea after watching Fury Road for the thousandth time the other night. It's not a 1:1 Fury Road AU, since both Jaime and Brienne are a hodgepodge of Max and Furiosa in different ways, and Cersei is about 1/10th as disgusting as Immortan Joe. Hopefully it works!

He was first the Queen’s brother, and second her sworn protector, and all along her lover, and now he is an Imperator. A glorified fucking driver.

Oh, Cersei dresses it up for the commons. Tells them he’s her knight. Her bravest warrior. The man who brings them bullets and gas in exchange for the water her people drag up from under the earth. Whenever he rides out in his rig, like he did today, she shouts his praises, and everyone in the commons cheers.

But Jaime was made for better things, before. When he was whole.

He’d killed the Mad King Aerys. A grasping, greedy warlord who wanted to burn half the commons alive so he’d have more for himself. Jaime was the first son of the noble house of Lannister, so he was appointed one of the king’s guards. A place of honor. A place in the king’s throne room, where he could hear the king’s mind slowly splinter as he made his plans. Jaime stood in the throne room with a dozen other noblemen as Aerys raged. _Burn them all_ , he’d said, and it had sounded like a promise. He killed two Stark men on a whim, and no one lifted a finger to stop him.

Jaime didn’t understand why no one _else_ had sheathed their swords in the Mad King’s back. It was only him, the youngest and greenest of the Kingsguard, who had the courage. His little brother Tyrion was the one who had to explain it to him, later: _your fellow guards, our fellow nobles, none of them were in the commons,_ he’d said _. Why should it matter to them if the commons burned?_

 

* * *

 

Tyrion’s dwarfism aside, the Lannisters had impeccable genes, by Aerys’ standards, so they had always lived in King’s Landing, the highest point of the Citadel. Not that those standards were very lofty. Targaryens intermarried more than the other nobles. In the grand houses, cousins were encouraged to wed, to keep the bloodlines pure, but Targaryens wed siblings, because they believed themselves divine. All things considered, that was the least of Jaime’s problems with them, but he couldn’t deny that generations of intermarriage and inbreeding had made a Targaryen in power a dangerous thing.

Aerys and his son were as bad as each other. Obsessed with ceremony and prophecy and their own fucking self-importance. Jaime put an end to one, and Robert Baratheon the other, but only one of them had songs sung about him. If the commons had any idea of what Jaime had done for them, maybe it would have been different, but nobody bothered to tell them. The nobility controlled the information that got out, and to _them_ , he was less than worthless. A man without honor. Killing a king he was sworn to protect, no matter that that king was mad.

 _Kingslayer_ , they called him, when they took his hand.

 _It was the best father could do_ , Cersei said while he lay feverish and suicidal. He couldn’t stop staring at the bandage that did too little to hide the shame of the missing appendage. _They demanded your head. Your hand was a compromise._

He thought he’d be left as a useless lapdog, locked in her rooms for her to pet and fuck when she wanted, otherwise set aside, but it was worse than that. She shuddered when his stump came near her, and she never kissed him or touched him again, and she banished him to the lower levels. She married Robert Baratheon, the new king, and even after he was dead, she never sought Jaime out or asked him to return to her. She let him wallow, and then, when she was the first Queen to rule the Citadel without a husband by her side, she told him that he was still needed to complete important tasks for her, and he pretended not to realize that he disgusted her. His twin, his mirror, his love.

Tyrion visited. Long as the journey was for him down all those steps. Long as it was on legs that ached. Tyrion visited. He was the only one.

 

* * *

 

The woman who appears from the backseat of his rig and shoves the gun in his face has a ghastly scar on her cheek, and she’s not much to look at besides. Hair short and yellow. Lips too large. Teeth too much. She’s got freckles, and her skin is blistered. Imperfect breeding. Doesn’t tan. But she’s pale enough from lack of total sun exposure, and she’s whole, without obvious physical deformities. A minor noble, then. She might even be from the middle levels, where he now keeps his home.

He doesn’t recognize her, but that doesn’t mean much. He keeps his head down these days, and he’s never sober until Cersei needs him to drive.

“We’re detouring,” this woman says.

He’s miles out from the Citadel. Only him and his assigned war boys backing him up, but they’re on top of the rig, the empty gasoline vessel, and it’s loud as hell up there. They won’t hear her quiet voice, low and intense. If he screams for them, it’ll be too late.

Tyrion had a metal arm made for him to compensate for the loss of his hand. It slips over his forearm, straps running up along his opposite shoulder. It hides his stump, his biggest shame, and it ends in a solid, heavy hand with metal fingers that are just slightly curved. It can hook things easily, and it packs a decent punch, but she’s looking at it. Wary of it. She knows it’s a threat, unlike most people who assume it’s a weakness.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I need the rig.”

“You can’t drive it without me.”

“I know the sequence.”

He squints in the rearview mirror at her. She looks back at him. Her eyes are very blue. If he stares at them, they make her almost pretty.

“No you don’t,” he says. “You watched what I did with my hands. Not what I did with my feet.”

A lie. The sequence that allows this truck to run is seven buttons on the dashboard. But her face falls. She wears her emotions too openly.

“Then you will drive us,” she says.

“Us?” he asks.

 

* * *

 

Jaime makes it a habit not to see his sister. Seeing her hurts. Not seeing her hurts, too. So he’ll wait as long as he can and then try again. _Maybe this time she won’t be disgusted with what I am. Maybe she will remember that we are supposed to be forever._

But she doesn’t have time for her twin. Her mirror. Her love. She turns him away and fucks whoever she wants, and he climbs back to his hole to lick his wounds until she needs him to drive another rig to another city to trade water for goods, because his name and face are still good for something even if the rest of him isn’t.

But still, for all he hasn’t seen her lately, he is sure that he would have known.

 

* * *

 

“Girls,” he repeats.

“Noble girls. The prettiest. I've taken them from your sister, and I've hidden them in your rig.”

“Cersei wouldn’t. Aerys tried to do it to her, once.”

“And then you killed him. And she avoided that fate when she became queen. But she doesn’t care if these girls suffer the same. She thinks they deserve it because they are too weak to escape the way she did. They’re younger and prettier, and she used those weapons well, once. She won’t give them a chance to use them against her.”

His anger flares.

“Cersei wouldn’t,” he repeats.

Girls stolen from their families and locked away. Slaves to be bred for the crown. Cersei had screamed and raged at their father when she was told she was to be Rhaegar’s, and Jaime has regretted every day since that it wasn’t him who smashed the dragon prince’s face to shards of bone and jelly. That was left to Robert Baratheon, who only did it because he wanted one of Rhaegar’s girls for himself.

“Cersei has,” the woman says.

“You can’t expect me to believe _you’re_ one of them,” he spits.

“I’m not,” she replies. She doesn’t rise to the taunt, doesn’t even appear stung by it, and he hates her for it. “I’m rescuing them.”

He is angry. He is disbelieving. He is _angry_. He thinks it’s impossible, because Cersei wouldn’t. She hates the sight of him, but he loves her still, and so he slams his head back into her face, this strange, straightforward woman with her astonishing eyes. Astonishing, and astonished in the rearview mirror in the second before his head meets hers. A declawed lion, missing one paw. He still can fight. He feels a savage pleasure for surprising her, but it doesn’t last long. She recovers and swings a punch at the side of his face, and his head cracks against the window. His foot comes off the gas, and she snarls at him like some feral beast and pushes both hands down on his kneecap.

“Keep driving,” she says.

Outside on the rig, shouting. The war boys have noticed something. She tries to see out the windows without exposing herself, and she takes her eyes off him. He takes his good hand off the wheel and reaches up. He pulls on the cord.

The horns sound. Long and rumbling. Battle horns. A warning.

The woman glares at him. Her eyes are too big for her face. They make her look more damning.

 _She’s lying_ , he thinks. An excuse. A self-justification. _There are no girls. Cersei wouldn’t._

He swings his metal arm back at her, but she’s ready for it, and she absorbs the blow with her flat chest and then wraps an arm around it. He pulls desperately, but she’s strong, and he’s already at a disadvantage, sitting in the seat in front of her. She pulls a knife from her boot, and it slices through the straps on his back.

_No no no._

The arm slides easily off, and she chucks it aside, and helplessness and terror well up within him, just like when he was called before the council and Tywin bade him kneel beside the marble slab on which Targaryen and Martell blood still dried.

 _I’m sorry_ , Cersei had said, when she left him at the door to the throne room before he was to make his entrance. She wouldn’t look at him, and he knew that she had lost an argument with their father.

Right up until the blade came down and cut off his hand, he hadn’t known what to expect.

And now it’s there, his stump. Waving helplessly, naked, hideous. He looks away, but it’s a mistake, because the woman isn’t done. His humiliation isn’t enough. She grabs it, and she pulls it behind him, twisting what remains of his arm, and she brings the knife to his throat.

“Keep. Driving,” she says.

If she thinks threatening his life is going to work…he wants to laugh in her face. As if he hasn’t spent the past years wanting to die. He slams on the brakes.

The first of his war boys arrives, clinging to the handholds on the side of the cab and swinging in the back window with a knife.

He expects the woman to fight, but it’s close quarters with her in the narrow backseat of the cab, and he has a dozen war boys waiting. They’ll drag her out and put her in chains, and maybe Cersei will be feeling merciful enough to just take _her_ hand, too, for trying to hijack a rig.

 _Why does she want an empty gas rig anyway?_ It’s a traitor’s voice inside his head, wondering. It sounds like Tyrion. _Why would an ugly woman concoct a story about beautiful girls, slaves to the crown? Why would she need a whole rig if not to hide the girls and get them away from here?_

The woman fights off the two men who come through the windows. She kills them with the knife that disarmed him, and she throws their bodies back out to the desert. Then she leaves, just swinging out a window, using her two hands to climb like it’s nothing, her muscles rippling, exposed by the lack of sleeves on her shirt. He watches in the rearview mirror. He throws the rig into park. He casts about for his arm. The straps are broken. It won’t stay on. It’s useless. He leaves it on the floor. He takes out the gun hidden beneath the dashboard, and he sticks a knife in his belt. He cannot fight as well as he used to. His right hand was always the better one. But he has good enough aim, and a bullet will stop her much easier than a knife will. He exits the truck.

She has already defeated all of his war boys.

His feet hit the sand just as he realizes this. They are alone in the desert, surrounded by bodies. Blood splashed on white sand. She stands above them, on top of the rig, like a warrior queen from a story. She has a wicked-looking knife in one hand, and a shotgun in the other.

The light hits her. She still isn’t pretty, but she is marvelous somehow. Terrifying and marvelous. Her pale skin glows in the sunlight, and her eyes are bluer than the bluest sky, and she _unmans_ him just by existing. He feels a stirring of admiration. A memory of once being able to fight as well as she apparently can. A yearning to be able to fight like that again. He’s sorry he missed seeing most of it. He’s sorry she’s probably going to kick _his_ ass next, or take a bullet to the head before she can try.

She jumps down from the rig, and for the first time he realizes how tall she is. She’s taller than him. She’s broad, too. Her arms are corded with muscles. Her thighs touch when she walks, and he can see how her leather leggings cling to the shape of them. He feels, suddenly, as tall as Tyrion.

She walks towards him, but she stops when he raises his gun. Her own gun comes up. The shotgun. It would destroy him. He would have to get very lucky with his tiny pistol to take a woman her size down in a single shot before she could blow him away. But she can’t shoot him. Or she thinks she can’t, anyway. She thinks she needs him to drive, and he’s sure it’s the only reason he’s still alive.

“You’re mad,” he tells her. “You killed all of them?”

“They were going to try to stop me,” she says. She does not waver. He feels a green boy beside her, though he must have a decade on her.

“I’m also going to try and stop you.”

“Of course you are,” she says. “Kingslayer.”

Rage, bubbling up, and he has always been a moron. He charges at her. He should just shoot her, but he wants to show her he can still fight.

They clash, and he hits her with the gun. She shoves him away. Kicks him in the chest with her boot, but he wears the blow and tumbles back and is still on his feet. He shoots, but she is fast, and already not where he thought she was, and she rips the gun from him and throws it into the sand.

“Yield,” she says, but he tackles her instead, lowering his shoulder to catch her in the chest with enough force that she falls. He straddles her hips. Hits her with his stump, catching her across the face and scrambling for his knife with his left hand. She twists her hips, wraps her legs around him, and flips them. The air leaves his lungs when the power of her hips drives him down, to his back. He tries to swing again with his stump, but she catches it in one hand and slams it savagely into the sand above his head. She punches him across the face with her other fist, and he sees black at the edge of his vision. He pulls out his knife finally with his left hand, and he swings. She catches it, and she tears the knife away.

“Yield,” she says again.

He bucks her off, because his legs and hips and stomach muscles still work even if his right hand is gone, and he’s still strong. She’s surprised by the motion, and she scrambles backward before he can regain his footing, and then they’re both crouched in the sand across from each other. He’s still bleeding from his nose, and she’s bleeding too, but she doesn’t look as tired as he feels. She’s younger. _She’s stronger_ , says Tyrion’s traitor’s voice. She’ll outlast him for sure, unless he gets lucky.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says.

“I’m not,” she replies, and she charges. Keeping her body low. It _is_ a mistake. It’s too telegraphed. He dodges and grabs her arm and spins her around, pinning it behind her back. She goes down hard, and he tries to straddle her again. Keep her down.

Except then he’s blind, fabric covering his face and pulling him back, off of her, and he hears voices. A sudden explosion of chattering, and he’s pulled by the fabric on his face until he’s flat on his back.

“Get him! Tie him up!”

“I say kill him. He’s _her_ brother! Which of us would have been his reward?”

“No! He’s worth more as a hostage!”

“You only say that because you love him. But does he love you?”

“He would have let her sell you same as us.”

“Kill him!”

He fights the fabric away, viscerally aware of his stump flailing like an ugly, flightless bird.

The sunlight hurts his eyes, and he squints, and he sees them above him.

Red hair. Honey brown hair. Nut brown. Black. Blonde.

Blonde.

 _Myrcella_.

Her own child. _Their_ own child.

They are all dressed…

His stomach sinks.

They are all dressed the way Aerys used to dress his girls. Filmy fabric. Gauzy. White. One of them, the black haired one with tan skin, has wrapped her shawl around his face and used it to pull him down. It’s around his throat, still, and her hands are wrapped around both ends, ready to strangle him with it if she has to.

He sees them, and he knows them.

Sansa Stark. Red hair. Pretty and young, like her mother was when he first saw her, back when she was Catelyn Tully and he had to pretend to flirt with other girls so people wouldn’t know he only loved his sister. Honey brown hair is Margaery Tyrell. She looks like her grandmother, and she has the same cunning in her eyes. Nut brown, he’s unsure, but he remembers a girl who used to go with Sansa everywhere. Less pretty. Less colorful. Sweet, in her way. Jeyne. The darker girl must be Talisa Maegyr. She was meant to marry Robb Stark, last he heard.

And Myrcella. His niece. His daughter.

No, no, no. Cersei wouldn’t. Not their daughter.

The tall woman stands above them, not even out of breath. Sansa hugs her.

“Thank you,” she sobs.

“You saved us,” Jeyne adds, clinging to the tall woman’s other side.

“Our babies will not be warlords,” Margaery says, and he realizes that she is speaking to him. She sneers. “We’re not going back.”

He feels ill.

“Cersei…” he starts.

“Cersei loathes the sight of you,” Talisa says.

“She calls you her most crippled brother.” Margaery, whose own brother walks with a limp, knows how badly that word can cut, and she wields it now like a weapon.

“She cries sometimes when people say your name,” Myrcella offers, and the others glare. “She _does_.”

“But not for love of you,” Margaery prompts.

“No,” Myrcella admits. “She says you would do her a favor to die so she can mourn you properly.” She looks sorry.

The tall woman crouches beside him.

“You love your sister,” she says. She says it with awareness and without the judgement he expects. “She is not the woman you remember.”

“What happened to her?” he asks Myrcella. He thought he knew his sister, though they have seen so little of each other in recent years. But he cannot deny this.

“Robert was cruel. Grandfather died. The Starks rebelled. Tyrion took power from her. Many things have happened, father.”

He blinks back tears. He does not know what to say to her.

 _Father_.

He feels ill.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t…not Cersei. She was…she hated…”

“She is not the woman you knew,” Sansa says. She has her hand on Myrcella’s shoulder, and he remembers the little girl who loved Joffrey and played games with Myrcella and Tommen and who was courteous to Tyrion even though she wanted to be like Cersei and Cersei was never anything but cruel to him.

 _You knew exactly who she was_ , Tyrion’s voice reminds him. _And you loved her anyway. You have forgiven her so many horrors. Can you forgive this?_

The tall woman is looking at him. In the distance, he can hear sounds. Car engines. Music. Cersei has called a war party. She wants the girls back.

The tall woman tilts her head as if to ask him a question. Eyes as blue as sapphires. She waits.


	2. The Queen's Little Housecat

 

The girls climb back into the gas tank through a hole that someone – the tall woman, probably – cut in the floor of the back seat. Jaime punches in the sequence to start the rig. The tall woman watches. She gathered all the guns from the bodies of his war boys. They’re her trophies now, and they lay scattered behind the two seats.

“There is nothing with your feet,” she says in a tone of realization, and he smiles at her.

“Liar,” he confirms. She sighs in his direction and then looks in the mirror outside her window.

“They’re gaining,” she says.

“If Cersei thinks I helped you take them, she’ll never stop.”

“She won’t stop no matter what. They were _hers._ It’s an insult.”

“How did you know about them? I didn’t even…Tyrion at least should have told me.”

She looks at him, judging him. Finds him worthy, apparently. Somehow.

“Her council was full, before. Every noble house. But there were rumors that she poisoned Robert, and Renly rebelled. He was killed.” She swallows and looks down at her hands. She cared for Renly, then. “Ned Stark tried to stop her, and he was killed as well. His family had to flee to the wastes. Sansa was taken as a hostage, and they were forced to leave her. Her mother sent me a message through one of the war boys.”

“The cousin? The Targaryen bastard?” Jaime asks. The tall woman nods.

“He and I were to rescue Sansa. Take her from the Citadel to a meeting place in the wastes. I found Sansa and all the other girls in the vault.” He can feel her eyes on him, and he’s glad that he can stare ahead at the sand as if he’s keeping a careful eye on the road. She speaks plainly. Not begging him to help her against his sister, but explaining why she needs it. “Cersei was keeping them there. She took Tyrell to keep the roses in line. She took Stark and Poole and Maegyr to keep the wolves at bay. Her own daughter served for the stags, and for your brother.”

“My brother,” Jaime points out. “Could have come to me with this information.”

“Could he have?” the woman asks. He doesn’t answer. She continues, her voice low and soothing and terrible. “They were only kept as threats at first, but with the old council shattered, a new one stepped up. Baelish. Bolton. Blackwater. Cersei knows better than anyone that women are what binds houses. Only Myrcella would have been safe from being sold into a bad marriage, but she would not stay when I came to free the others. When I found out what was happening, I knew I had to save all of them.”

She is a singular creature. A girl so ugly must have grown up loathing pretty girls like Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell. He knows the way his own sister, beautiful and perfect, spoke of the unfortunate looking or even the merely plain. Jeering and horrible. This woman must have grown up with their sneers and laughter, and yet she saw a wrong being committed, and she didn’t hesitate.

“You did this alone?”

“There was some help.”

“The bastard? Not much help, a war boy.”

“Snow was a great help. And so was your brother.”

Jaime looks at her. He doesn’t think she’s lying. He doesn’t think she’s capable of it.

“Tyrion?”

“Do you have another?”

“What did he do? How did he help?”

“He told me which rig to take. He said you would need some convincing, because you were as much a slave to Cersei as the girls were, though without the chains. But he said you would help me.”

“You say Cersei wouldn’t have married Myrcella off. Are you sure?”

He sounds desperate for this one bit of hope that Cersei is not the monster he thinks she might be. He feels weak. He sees Cersei’s disgust when she first saw the stump of his arm. He _is_ weak. The tall woman knows it, and her expression softens.

“Tyrion wasn’t. He said that your sister loves her children. Joffrey and Tommen are gone. Myrcella is all that’s left. Cersei locked her away to protect the crown from the Baratheons, but she also locked her away to protect _her_. Tyrion wanted to send her away, to Dorne, to make a good marriage with a man who might love her, but Cersei stopped him. Tyrion said that he hoped Cersei would only use Myrcella if she was very desperate. But he wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to take the risk. Neither did Myrcella. She begged me not to leave her behind.”

Her voice is too soft and considering. He hates it. She thinks his sister is a monster, and she’s probably right, but she’s being kind to him about it. Trying to help him cope with this revelation. She doesn’t owe him this kindness. 

“It might have been easier for you if you’d left her,” he points out. The woman nods.

“I know,” she says. “But it wouldn’t have been right.”

Cersei will kill this woman if she catches them. She’ll kill her for taking all the girls, but she’ll _relish_ it because of Myrcella. She’s hateful, Cersei. She’ll take pleasure in revenge.

_But you knew that already_ , Tyrion’s voice reminds him. And yet Tyrion, the man who knows better than anyone what kind of fool Jaime is for Cersei, still believed that he would help.

Gods damn him, but he was right.

 

* * *

 

They drive, but he knows Cersei and her war party will catch them. He also knows that if they reach the canyon in time, he can rig the rocky pass to collapse. He pushes the rig to its limit, but it’ll be close.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Does it matter?”

“Fine. When we get to the rocks, I’m going to get out. There was a trap set here, back when Aerys reigned. I set it up myself. I just have to trip it, and the rocks will come down. But it will be close. The war party is faster than us. When I yell ‘wench’, you put the rig into drive, and you _go_.”

“What if you aren’t aboard?” she asks. He stares at her.

“Then you keep driving,” he says.

She bites her lip. It is chapped and oversized, and the motion pulls at her scar. Hideous, like someone took a bite out of her cheek. But she nods, and her eyes don’t leave his, and he lets himself look at her for a while.

“Tyrion said that you would help,” she says. “I did not believe him.”

He doesn’t respond to that. It is too much like an apology, and he knows that he doesn’t deserve one.

 

* * *

 

When they reach the rocks, he drives the rig through the pass, far enough that the explosion won’t take the rig out with it, and then he stops. He refreshes the woman’s memory of the sequence, and she watches him carefully, and she nods. They stare at each other for a bit. It’s not uncomfortable, though it feels like it should be. He has a feeling that she’s seeing him for all his flaws and faults, and maybe he should turn away and be terrified of what she might be seeing, but he can’t. She feels like a worthy judge. She can damn him as much as she wants. He gets down from the rig, and the woman slides into his seat.

He takes a few steps away from it, and he mislikes the silence. He has been an Imperator for long enough now that he knows when something is brewing, and it’s more than just the distant sounds of the approaching war party that makes him nervous. He stops walking.

“What is it?” the woman asks. He hesitates.

Above, he hears a trickle of sand and gravel. The crunch of a boot on the rocks that rise on either side of the road. Someone is moving. He raises his arms in surrender, and he looks up, squinting against the sun.

“Stay in the rig, and get ready to drive,” he says.

A broad figure stands on top of the canyon walls, several stories up. They wear goggles and a brown coat to help blend in with the red rock and stone. Wildling.

“Don’t remember receiving payment to cross through our lands, Kneeler,” calls a voice. A thick brogue, amused but laced with danger.

“Tormund, it’s me,” calls the woman from the driver’s seat, and he hears the door to the rig open. He hears her feet landing on the road as she jumps down, and she steps up beside Jaime. Takes another step. Slides in front of him.

She’s taller than him. Not by much, but by enough. She blocks him completely from the Wildling’s sight. Jaime feels…small.

_Safe_ , his traitor’s brain whispers. _You feel safe_. It’s a new feeling. With Cersei, he was always the one in front.

“My queen!”

Tormund greets her happily, and then he leaps out into the open air, and Jaime feels his stomach drop as the man hurtles towards them. He’s mad. He’s _mad_. That’s too big a drop.

But a rope is thrown from above, from some out-of-sight Wildling, and Tormund catches it effortlessly mid-air, and he slides down the length of it until he’s tumbling in a graceless attempt at a somersault at the tall woman’s feet. When he raises up and pushes his goggles on top of his head, he’s a red-haired man with a bushy beard. He affects a dramatic bow.

The tall woman stares him down. She doesn’t quite smile, but she doesn’t glare, either.

“Snow told me you’d be ready for us,” she says.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you in the cripple’s rig.”

Jaime growls. Like a dog. Like the lapdog he’s always been accused of being. He’s embarrassed immediately, and Tormund laughs. Hearty and open.

“The queen’s brothers are helping us save the girls,” the tall woman says patiently.

“And Snow?”

“He wasn’t at the rendezvous point, and the queen is after us. I fear the worst.”

“Aye,” Tormund says. He frowns beyond the tall woman at Jaime. “Come out from under the big woman’s skirts, lad. I won’t bite.”

Jaime glowers. He tries to step around her, but she puts out a hand to stop him. The end of his stump hits her palm, and she wraps her hand around it, fingers clamping on his wrist. He wants to jerk away, but he can’t, as if he has been physically struck motionless.

“Why?” she asks. “So your snipers can take him out?”

Tormund grins and throws up his hands a little bashfully.

“Can you blame them? To kill a Kingslayer. Kingslayerslayer. A lofty title.”

“Bit of a mouthful. He’s with me.”

“You don’t make anything easy.”

“You wouldn’t like it if I did.”

She doesn’t sound like she’s flirting, but Tormund reacts as if she is, and he blushes red as his hair.

“You always know exactly what to say,” he demurs. “What’s the plan? Where was the queen’s little housecat going?”

“Kingslayer,” she says, turning to look at him. Her fingers squeeze on his stump. He can’t tell if it’s meant to be threatening or soothing. It’s both, regardless of intention. “Tell him.”

“The Mad King rigged this canyon to drop rocks on attacking convoys,” Jaime says. His throat feels dry. His stump is the only thing with feeling, and it screams with sensation. He is the only one who has touched it since the maester. He is the only one who has touched the new skin on his wrist that covers the hole where his hand used to be, and now she has _enveloped_ it with her own.

“Aye. I remember the bombs,” Tormond says. “Aerys paid us well to keep them safe.”

“I want to blow them. Drop the rocks on the war party that follows us.”

“Bold move, for a Kneeler. I like it. I’ll help you.”

“Tormund,” the tall woman says. Warning.

“I’ll help your pretty little prince, don’t worry. Only stuff I like more than you is blowing things to shit and killing Kneelers. This is a good chance to hit all my boxes at once.” He winks, and Jaime looks doubtfully up at the tall woman. She squeezes his stump again, and then she lets it go. It tingles.

“All right,” she says. “Don’t take too long.” He nods, and he looks away from her astonishing eyes. He feels as if he has run a long way. The skin of his arm is crawling, like something spreading from his stump where she’d touched him.

“Remember,” he says, already walking away. “When I yell _wench_ …”

“Brienne,” she says. He looks at her over his shoulder. She’s flushing like Tormund now. Her eyes are on his chest, like she can’t bear to lift them any higher. “My name is Brienne.”

_Brienne. Pretty name for pretty eyes_. Tyrion’s voice again.

“Brienne,” he says. Tormund tugs on his arm to get him moving, and he follows.

Brienne. Brienne. It hums in his mind as he works. A pretty name for such an ugly girl. A pretty name for such a warrior. 

 

* * *

 

Tormund helps, like he said he would, and he whistles cheerfully while he works. They dig out the wires, buried under years of sand from storms but blessedly intact. They find the control box. It was rigged to blow remotely, once, but Aerys had the detonator, and it’s probably back at the Citadel if it hasn’t been melted down for scrap. But Tormund works quickly to detach the control box. He pulls a spool of wire out of his big jacket, and he attaches one end to the box and the other to the wire it came from, extending its reach. He points up to the overlook point where he had been standing before.

“I’ll bring it there. Drop the rocks on their heads when they try to come through. We’ll lay covering fire if they cross into the canyon. They know the boundary. They know the rules. They’re fair game the second they pass through here. You should get back to her. The good queen Brienne.”

“What’s she queen of, anyway?” Jaime asks.

“Me,” Tormund laughs. “I love a big woman. Have you seen her fight?”

Jaime is very aware of the bruises on his face.

“I’ve seen it,” he says.

“Gods love a big woman, especially a big woman who knows how to use her fists. Beautiful. Just beautiful.”

_She isn’t,_ Jaime wants to argue, but he sees her big blue eyes, and the way she stood over his dead war boys on the rig, and the way she looked at him when she told him that Cersei wasn’t the woman he remembers, and that she had to help the girls.

_Beautiful_. He would have said that Cersei was the most beautiful woman alive, but there is so much ugliness in what she has been doing.

“Beautiful,” he agrees finally. Tormund claps him on the back.

“Glad to know I’m not the only one who likes a woman in charge,” he says with a mighty wink.

Jaime almost laughs, but then the peace is broken. War horns. Music. Too loud, too close. He and Tormund look past the rocks, and he sees Cersei’s car bearing down on them.

“Brienne!” he yells. The rig begins to move.

“Go!” Tormund shouts. He’s already taking off, back up the canyon. Scrambling. Reaching for the rope that brought him down. He tugs on it, and it begins to rise, dragging him with it. Dragging his spool of wire, with the control box.

Jaime runs. His feet slip in the sand. The rig is slow to get moving, but it’s already picking up speed. He rolls under it, and he reaches for the undercarriage. He hooks his stump around one of the rods, prepared to drag himself along to the front while the rig picks up speed, and he looks up and sees curious faces looking down at him. The maintenance hatch to the rig is open, and the girls crowd around it.

“Here, father,” Myrcella says. “She might need you.” 

He allows them to pull him inside, and then he’s crawling towards the front, where the hole leads into his cabin. Myrcella follows him. Sansa, too.

He clambers out and into the passenger seat, and Brienne looks at him and flashes a smile that’s relieved, and genuine, and

_beautiful_ , Tormund had said.

“He needs to blow it now,” Jaime says. “They were…”

But his voice is sucked away by the sound of the boom. The explosion rocks them forward, pushing the rig along, back tires spinning on air for a moment as they’re lifted several feet up. Then they’re slamming back down on the ground, and Brienne’s chest slams into the steering wheel. The horn sounds out. Baleful. Angry.

“Here, father,” Myrcella says again. She’s shoving his metal arm into place, over his stump.

“The straps,” he argues.

“Stop moving,” Sansa says. She has a needle between her lips. Myrcella clamps the straps over his opposite shoulder, keeping them together, and Sansa sews.

“Some made it through,” Brienne says, calmly. Jaime tries to hold still so the Stark girl doesn’t pierce his skin, but he turns his head to see the mirror outside his window. Cersei’s car has big, sturdy tires, big enough to scale the rocks. There are others, two more, that manage to follow. The rest have been delayed. It’s not enough. Jaime can see Cersei’s car. Gregor fucking Clegane, the fucking _Mountain,_ is driving. If he gets ahold of them, if he gets ahold of _Brienne_ …

“I need a gun,” Brienne says calmly. Myrcella abandons Sansa to her task, and she begins to shift through the weapons.

“Shotgun?” she asks. Brienne nods. She has her eyes ahead, and both hands on the wheel, but she flickers glances back.

Above, on the rocks, the Wildlings have opened fire. War boys fall off their precarious perches on the sides, but the cars keep gaining. Cersei’s takes up the rear, waiting, while the other two speed forward. One on either side.

“They’ll try to get in front of us to spike our tires,” Jaime says. Brienne looks at him.

“Don’t let them,” she says simply.

There’s trust in her expression. Tyrion said that she could trust him, and she didn’t at first, but she does now. She’s naive. She’s a fool. He loves his sister. He would never hurt his sister.

And yet. And yet. His daughter looks at him with big, terrified eyes. So like Cersei’s, but so kind instead of cunning.

“Finished,” the Stark girl says. She pats his shoulder. “Can you move it?”

His arm is back in place, its metal weight reassuring. The end of his stump safely hidden.

Cersei’s eyes shuttering in disgust. Brienne’s hand wrapped around skin that even _he_ can’t stomach touching.

“I can move it,” he says. He looks at Myrcella again.

_Nothing else matters_ , he used to tell Cersei, when she was scared. _Only us_.

“Don’t let them,” Brienne says again. Her voice is more strained.

_You always knew what she was. And you loved her anyway._

“I won’t,” he says.

He reaches back with his good hand, and he grabs the rifle he knows he’s best with. Long and designed for one shot at a time. Slower than some of the others, but his aim with it hasn’t changed since he lost his hand.

He pulls open the hatch on top of the roof, and he stands up, balancing the rifle on his shoulder, bracing his knee on the back of the passenger seat. He aims for the front left tire of the car speeding up their side. He fires.

The tire explodes. The car swerves, and hits a rocky outcropping, and one of the war boys jumps off its back and onto the rig. Jaime swears. Shoulders the weapon again. Another war boy jumps, this one from the other car.

The second car is already trailing off; Brienne’s shotgun has made a mess of the driver’s face, he sees.

Above him, suddenly, a motorbike leaping from the canyon walls. A Wildling vehicle, but he sees one of Cersei’s men driving it. He fires, and hits the rider in the shoulder and sends him flying back onto the road. The bike falls so close that he has to duck to avoid it. Brienne fires out the roof he just left, takes out another stolen bike. Jaime grins at her, and she smiles back, and then he pops back up top.

The two war boys have scaled each side of the rig, and they begin to fight each other on top of it. It takes him only a moment to understand.

_He wasn’t at the rendezvous point_ , Brienne had said.

One of them must be Snow, the Targaryen bastard, but Jaime hasn’t seen the lad in years, and both war boys have the black hair he remembers on him.

“Sansa!” he yells, reaching down into the rig without looking. A small hand grabs his own, and he pulls her up to stand in front of him. She braces herself on the edge of the seat, and she looks up and gasps when she sees. “Which one do I shoot?” he asks.

“Straight hair, no scar,” she says quickly, and he fires.

She flinches. The sound, of course. Right over her shoulder. The boy with straight black hair falls off the back of the rig, and the other boy, with his curly black hair and hooked scar around his eye, looks up. Sees Sansa. 

“Jon!” Sansa cries, her arms open, and Snow charges towards them. Cersei’s car is coming up alongside. The enormous swiveling gun on the back is being manned.  

“Look out, Snow!” Jaime shouts, and Snow hits the top of the rig on his belly just as Lancel opens fire and peppers the side of the rig with poor aim.

“The girls are in there!”

Cersei’s voice, above the noise. She’s angry. Not afraid. Not worried about the girls. _Angry_.

_You knew exactly what she was_ , Tyrion says, and Jaime doesn’t know how true that is anymore. He fires again, and his shot hits the tire, but they are stronger than the tires of the other cars, and it does not puncture. Lancel is trying to turn the machine gun towards him, but he’s small and uncertain, and Jaime kills him before he can.

_There’s no going back now_ , he thinks. _Kinslayer._

Cersei locks eyes with him. He remembers golden hair, long and curtained around his face when she rode him, blocking out the rest of the world until it was only her, only Cersei.

_Nothing else matters. Only us._

She looks at him, her green eyes that are also _his_ green eyes, and he wonders if she can feel his heart beating hard, and he wonders if she can feel his hatred and love mingling together into a knot of anxiety. He doesn’t raise the gun. Snow jumps down into the space between the rig and the cab. Sansa heads back in, and he can hear her yelling at Myrcella to open the door to let Snow in.

Cersei looks at him. The Mountain drives. Lancel is dead on the back of their car.

Cersei has a gun, he realizes. She stands up in the hatch in her own roof. She’s facing him. She steadies the weapon. She looks sorry, but she doesn’t lower the gun. He doesn’t raise his.

Someone grabs him by the belt and pulls, and he falls down into the cab, tumbling into the passenger seat, backwards and graceless and ungainly. He hits the back of his head against the hatch hard when he falls. He hears the crack of Cersei’s gun as the bullet whizzes overhead. Brienne reaches up and yanks the roof closed.

“Fool,” she says. She looks at him, and disgust blazes in her eyes. There was none there when she mentioned that he loved his sister. But this, this lack of self-preservation. This self-hate. _Fool_. She isn’t wrong.

“I…” he starts.

“She tried to kill you,” she says. She looks at him again. Startling blue eyes glittery with fury.

“Father!”

Myrcella screams, and then she lurches, flinging the back door open. His heart stops as she leaps out, but she’s holding onto the window, and she doesn’t fall. She only pushes the door open with the whole of her body, displaying herself proud, her arms and legs spread as a starfish, blocking him from his sister’s second shot. Cersei would have taken off half his face with that, but she drops the gun when she sees Myrcella. When she sees the hate in Myrcella’s expression.

Snow, still lurking in the space between the rig and the cabin, somehow has an explosive spear in his hand, and he uses the distraction to launch it. It hits just under the tire of the driver’s side, and it explodes. The car flips, lost in the rocks.

Brienne doesn’t even slow down.

Jaime blinks furiously, his brain addled and slow and confused. Sansa pulls Myrcella back into the cabin, crying. Myrcella isn’t crying, but she’s shaking and terrified now that her plan has worked.

“Where’s Jon?” Myrcella asks, and Sansa gasps again, and she clambers over to stick her head out the still-open door. Jaime leans out the window and sees Snow creeping along the side of the cabin using the handholds that Jaime welded on for the war boys. Sansa sobs and reaches out for him. She pulls him in. She pulls the door closed.

Silence. Blessed silence. Only the sound of the rig and the sound of Sansa’s sobs and Snow’s quiet murmurs as they wrap their arms around each other.

“Are you done trying to die?” Brienne asks. She takes her eyes off the open road to look at him. He swallows back spite, and he nods.

“Yes,” he says, and he even thinks he believes it.  

 

* * *

 

He dreams of Cersei. Golden hair. Her apology at the door. The way she couldn’t look when they held him down and cut off his hand. His father had watched. Stern. Unforgiving. He was angry at all of them for demanding it, but he was angrier with Jaime for ruining his chances at more ladder-climbing by killing the king.

Cersei was angry, too, though he did not understand why.

“I saved everyone,” he had raged later. She had only stared at him.

“I saved them all,” he rages in his dream, but she only kisses him, her golden hair all around. He tries to push it away from her face, but he sees his stump and stops. She reaches for it, wraps her fingers around it, and he feels _relief_ , like he has been holding his breath.

“I saved them all,” he says again.

“Who did you save?” she asks sweetly, her voice soft the way he remembers it being when they were young.

“I saved everyone. He would have burned them all.”

“Them,” she whispers, and she leans away from him. Her golden hair shimmers. “Them. Not us.”

_Nothing else matters. Only us._

“He was going to burn them all.”

“You should have let them burn,” Cersei whispers, and then she’s gone, her golden hair vanishing into flame, and he’s alone, kneeling over the marble slab, staring at the bloody stump where his hand used to be as Qyburn approaches to cauterize it.

“No,” he whimpers, but the maester smiles.

 

* * *

 

He jolts awake to find that it’s dark. Brienne is still driving. She looks steady as a boulder in a sandstorm. Unmoved by anything. In the back, Myrcella curls against one window. Sansa and Snow must be back in the rig with the other girls. Someone has given Myrcella a blanket, and it makes Jaime realize that it’s grown colder. It gets cold sometimes at night, but he doesn’t remember ever feeling this chilled. Maybe it’s the emptiness that he’s been feeling since Cersei tried to end his life.

“How long have you been driving?” he asks. His voice is rough with sleep.

“All day. Most of the night.”

Her voice is hard.

“I’m sorry,” he says, though he’s not sure what he’s sorry for. For falling asleep, or maybe for standing there and letting Cersei take the shot.

She hadn’t wanted to. He could see it in her eyes, and at least he can cling to that. She had hesitated.

_But she would have done it._ Tyrion’s voice again, and he’s right. She would have done it. She would have killed him if Brienne hadn’t been there.

“Thank you,” he says. She doesn’t react to it any more than she had reacted to _I’m sorry_ , and he looks at her, resting his cheek against the seat behind him. Her eyes are locked on the road ahead, and her knuckles are white. “Are you tired?”

“Yes. But I can drive.”

“I could take over. Better driver than I am a shooter, anyway. I bet you’d be better on the guns.”

She looks at him, and he gives her a half smile that might be pathetic. She looks him over, and he feels judged again. Finally, she nods.

“Okay,” she says.

 


	3. Jaime

Jaime drives until the sun comes up, and then they get stuck in some mud, and Brienne rouses the girls and Snow to help.

Snow looks battered and a bit sickly as he and Jaime stand side-by-side, watching Brienne attach a winch to the front of the rig and then run it out to wrap it around the solitary, half-rotted tree in this wasteland.

“How did you manage to get here?” Jaime asks.

“Did what I had to,” Snow replies. He looks over at Jaime, considering. “Killed a few of your cousins.”

“So did I,” Jaime says, remembering Lancel. “They probably deserved it.”

“They were helping your sister.”

“So they definitely deserved it.”

“You were helping your sister once, too.”

“And if you had killed me then, I would have deserved it.”

“And now?”

“What about now?”

“Do you still deserve it?”

Jaime sighs. He remembers now why he has always hated Snow. He’s so like Ned Stark, his gods damned uncle, with all his rigid honor and unwavering desperation to do the right thing, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.

“A few good deeds don’t change a man’s past,” he says. “Some would say I do deserve death.”

“Are you one of them?”

“On my best days.”

“And on your worst?”

“On my worst, I’d kill you if you tried. One hand or no.”

Snow smirks a little. There’s a hollowness behind his eyes that wasn’t there the last time they spoke. But that was when he was younger, a whelp, newly made war boy and excited about the chance to prove himself. In Jaime’s experience, you learn quickly that your dreams aren’t always what you hope they’ll be.

“When Ned Stark was alive, you and his eldest girl were meant to wed,” Jaime says, and the smirk disappears.

“That was a secret.”

“Ned was never very good at secrets.”

“He thought it would temper Robert Baratheon to know Lyanna’s son was married to a Stark girl.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“I know that now.”

It hadn’t tempered Cersei, either. She’d had Snow conscripted into the war boys, who were worth less than nothing. Snow’s lucky he’s survived this long.

“Dear Ned never got the chance to know how wrong he was. Or maybe he did finally figure it out, at the end. He could be slow about politics, but he wasn’t a total fool.”

“Don’t talk about him like that.”

“Why not? You think I wouldn’t talk about my father the same? My uncle? Cersei? Name me a person and I will call them a fool for the things they’re foolish about.”

“Brienne?” Snow asks. There’s a savagery in his expression, like he expects Jaime to bristle.

“Brienne is more fool than any of us. She has twice the honor of a normal person.”

“And that makes her a fool?”

“Of course it does.”

Snow scoffs, and he walks away. Jaime decides to take that as a victory, though it feels like a hollow one.

 

* * *

 

Between them, they manage to free the rig. Half of them wind up caked in mud for their efforts, Jaime more than any of them, so he pulls off the road and drives them to a hot spring he remembers. They bathe in shifts while the others guard the rig, and when it’s his turn he stubbornly wears his metal arm all the way to the edge of the pool, though he shucks the rest of his clothing as he goes. Brienne looks up and flushes bright when she sees him in only his smallclothes and shirt, which makes him want to laugh until he tries to take off his arm and realizes that Sansa has sewn it tighter than it used to be, so he can’t reach the buckle.

“Would you like some help?” Brienne asks. She looks somewhere over his shoulder even though all his best bits are still covered.

“I can do it,” he says. He tries, twisting his back so he can reach the strap. It’s just out of reach, like in some kind of nightmare where he is so _close_ to his goal but kept just barely away from it. He laughs, because it’s either that or get angry, and she is already looking at him like he’s Wildfire waiting to go off. “All right, never mind. I can’t do it.”

Brienne – she’s _naked_ , he realizes, under the bubbling hot spring – glides towards him, crouching awkwardly to keep herself covered under the water, and he kneels and leans towards her so that she can unbuckle the strap in that impossible place just behind his shoulderblade.

“There,” she says. She’s not satisfied with just the single buckle. She slides the whole thing off, gentler than she did the first time. He feels the loss of it, like he always does. The slow revelation of his shame. The reminder that he is broken beneath it. “I’m sorry I cut it,” she says.

“You shouldn’t be. It was a smart move.”

“Yes, it was,” she agrees. He turns his back as she begins to examine the contraption, and he hears the gentle metal clank as she lays it down on the rock. He struggles out of his shirt one-handed. It’s normally easier – his one hand doesn’t normally _shake_ – but he doesn’t want her to help him with his _laces_ , too.

“I’m not usually this embarrassing,” he says. She snorts.

“I doubt that,” she says. He chances a look over his shoulder at her, because something snarling and defensive rises up within him at those words, but she’s back to her corner, scrubbing at her shoulders and not looking at him, and he knows that she didn’t mean it because of his missing hand. She meant it because she thinks he’s annoying and embarrassing. With two hands, he’d probably be even worse. He grins. It’s intoxicating, talking to someone who doesn’t treat him like he’s lost his worth. To Brienne, he probably never had any to begin with. His hand makes absolutely no difference.

He takes off the rest of his clothes and steps into the water. It’s warm, and it reminds him of the emptiness inside him. He was distracted by the physical work, the aches and embarrassments of getting the rig out of the mud, but now Cersei’s face flashes behind his eyes. The sorrow in her expression as she raised the gun. The fact that the gun fired anyway.

“We’ve never met before this, have we?” he asks, because he needs to stop thinking of his sister. Brienne looks at him, and then looks away again immediately, flushing bright red. He sits down so the water covers him. He tries not to laugh.

“No, we haven’t,” she says in a strangled voice. “I saw you fight once, though. You were very good.”

“When?”

“There was a tournament a few years ago. When Aerys was king.”

“Well, it would have to be,” Jaime points out, raising his stump. Her eyes flicker to it, and he ducks it back under the water immediately, surprised at himself. He usually doesn’t call attention to it. He usually does everything he can to keep it hidden. But he still remembers the way her hand felt wrapped around it, and it’s fucking _humiliating_ that he’s thinking about her touching it again and that his cock is actually stirring under the water, like it has forgotten that she’s ugly.

She laughs a little at the jest.

“Your brother did warn me you’re very annoying,” she says.

“Oh?” Jaime can’t help but smile, and he rests his arms along the side of the pool. “Annoying. What else? Handsome? Clever?”

“Self-pitying,” Brienne says, and he laughs even though it stings.

“Well, he would know. I do must of my drunken ranting to him.”

“Yes. He said that, as well.”

“That I drunkenly rant?”

“That you talk a lot and are often drinking.”

Jaime tilts his head to one side in a concession to the point. Brienne has her knees pulled up to her chest now, and she watches him carefully.

“When I said that you killed Aerys to raise Cersei to power, he laughed at me,” she says. “I was only repeating what I’d heard.”

“Well, you’ve heard what the other nobles wanted you to hear,” Jaime says. He feels as if she has sat on his hips again, driving him into the earth. That breathless feeling like crushed lungs. That helpless feeling like when she ripped his arm from him. He is naked before her, but his body has always been a source of pride. He knows he is beautiful because Cersei is beautiful, and they are mirrors of each other. And this girl, this ugly girl, of _course_ she thinks he is beautiful. But outward beauty has never been his weakness. Even with his hand gone. It’s what people see when they look into his eyes that has always made him hesitate. People like her, especially. _Good_ people. He fears and craves it.

“Would you tell me the truth, if I asked?” she asks.

“Would you believe me if I told you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why would you lie?”

“To make myself seem noble to you. To make you want to fuck me. To make you think I’m worth saving.”

Her eyebrows raise higher with every example.

“ _Fuck_ you?” she asks. She isn’t quite laughing. “You would lie just to toy with me?”

“What makes you think it would be to toy with you?” he asks.

“Tyrion.”

“Tyrion told you I don’t want to fuck you?”

“He told me that you are a slave to your sister. That you’ve never been with anyone else.”

“He’s right. I haven’t.”

“Why did you kill Aerys?” she asks. She is dodging the idea of fucking him. He lets it die. He leaves the edge of the pool, and he drifts towards her, into the deeper middle. She watches him approach, and he thinks of sheep and lions and prey. She is stronger than him. She is bigger than him. But there is a fragility here, with her naked and vulnerable and allowing him to approach. _You could stop me,_ he thinks, and there is power in knowing that and in knowing that she _doesn’t_.

“The Citadel relies on the gardens above. It relies on the water below. King’s Landing and the top few layers of The Citadel, they hardly feel the sting of rations. We can eat whatever we want. Drink whatever we want. But there was a bad harvest that year, and all of Aerys’ advisors were telling him that we would need to cut back. The population in the commons had exploded. It had exploded in King’s Landing, too. There were too many of us. Rickard Stark, Ned Stark’s father, gave the king several very good ideas. Restricting birth rates. Rationing food and water. Education to make sure that we didn’t use more than we could produce. Aerys burned he and his son Brandon alive for daring to make the suggestions, and then he decreed that he would rain fire down on the commons and kill as many as he could so that we wouldn’t have to suffer any shortages. Fewer mouths to feed if there are fewer mouths to eat.”

Brienne is looking at him. Staring at him. Her eyes are bluer than the water. Bluer than the very blue sky. He watches her worry her too-big bottom lip between her prominent teeth, and his cock stirs again. _She believes me_.

_She’s a fool_ , Cersei’s voice says. _She’s a fool to trust you_.

_But I’m telling the truth_.

“My father,” Jaime says. “Agreed with Aerys’ plans. He didn’t like it, but he also wasn’t going to let himself be burned alive for the sake of a few thousand people he didn’t give a shit about anyway. And no one else in the room with me that day, none of those honorable men who everyone is so fucking fond of, did anything. It was only me. I was the only one.”

“They took your hand for killing the king,” Brienne says. She sounds horrified.

“Did you not know that?”

“They took your hand for saving those people.”

He cannot stop staring at her eyes. They are hurt for him, but not pitying. They are horrified, but not disgusted. They are righteous and good and honorable, but they _understand_. Yes, he was right about her. She is good. He wants to kiss her. He must have lost his fucking mind. He thinks of that safe feeling again when she stepped in front of him. _She’s taller than me_ , he had thought, and he thinks it again now, and his body feels flushed all over.

“Yes,” he says. “They took my hand for that.”

She stares at him, and she removes her arms from where they are folded against her chest. She is below the water still, so he cannot see her, but it feels like a baring anyway. She lifts one hand out to him, and he doesn’t know what she wants. Not at first. She reaches below the water, and she finds his stump.

He flinches back, but not far enough to jerk it away from her. She’s watching him carefully.

“Is it all right?” she asks. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore,” he admits, and she takes that as permission, though he’s not sure if it is. She raises it out of the water, and she looks at it, and he looks at her. Her face is flushed red, and the blush creeps down to her chest. She examines the stump with her eyes, and her fingers dance over it. It’s absurd to him that she could unman him so easily and so without trying. He wants to laugh. She has no idea. She is so used to being unwanted, unwantable to men like him. To her, this is an innocent, friendly, sexless gesture. Curiosity and sympathy. Gods help him. He barely even knows this woman, but he wants her more than he’s ever wanted anyone. Why? Because she can touch his stump without flinching? Because she believes him? Because she saved his daughter?

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” she asks, finally looking up at him. He wonders if she can see his impure thoughts. No, she can’t. He knows she can’t. She thinks he’s too beautiful to have impure thoughts about the likes of her. It makes him want her even more.

“Who would believe me?” he asks. She’s silent, but he can hear her answer.

_I would have._

 

* * *

 

They drive for the rest of the night. Jaime first, and then Brienne again. She is the only person he trusts to drive the rig. It’s slow and cumbersome and difficult to handle, but she drives it with the same steely confidence with which she does everything. He likes the comfort of her next to him. He trusts her more quickly than he has ever trusted anyone. It’s Tyrion, he knows. Tyrion is the only person he trusts enough to accept a woman like this in his rig, in his life. If she’d been sent by anyone else, _aided_ by anyone else – _even Cersei_ , he thinks bitterly – he wouldn’t trust her like this.

But Tyrion…

He’s the only one who still looks at Jaime as if he hasn’t lost his whole self, and now there’s her. This woman. _Brienne_.

She drives his rig, and he watches her. He barely knows anything about her, still, and he has been in her company for so little time, and yet her face has changed somehow. As if they have grown together, aged together, as if he has watched her reach womanhood. But it’s only his mind tricking him, making him see beauty now where he saw none before.

The last time he saw Cersei in her private rooms, he’d all but begged her to look at him. _I’ll leave the hand on. I’ll cover the stump. You can tie it behind my back so it won’t accidentally touch you. Please_.

But he’d known all along that it was hopeless. His begging, his desperation, made him weak, and it disgusted her. Her disgust made her face hideous, when it had never been before. It took the well-loved planes of her face and turned them to something sneering and twisted. Beauty made foul by her hatred.

Brienne has been a study in the reverse. Too big lips are now just plump enough to tempt him. Prominent teeth are strong and fascinating. Her broken nose is bold and compelling. Straw-colored hair is like the sand around him, and he imagines it would feel as fine.

_You’re a fucking idiot_. Tyrion’s voice. _When will you learn? You do not need to devote yourself to a false idol, some goddess, to survive_.

But it is all Jaime has ever known, to worship a woman. Why not _this_ woman? She is doing a good thing. She is risking her life to save people. He was noble enough to do the same, once. Maybe, if he helps her, he can find some kind of redemption for the years he spent _not_ helping.

“Do you need a rest?” he asks, feeling his throat stick together with dryness. Brienne looks over at him. Her eyes. Gods, her eyes. They’re the best part of her. He can see _all_ of her through them. They’re big enough to contain all of her soul at once.

“Yes, all right,” she says, and she starts to pull over. “Thank you, Jaime.”

_Get out,_ Cersei had sneered, looking him up and down as if he was Rhaegar, as if he was Robert Baratheon, as if he was any of those men who had dared to use her body in the past. Just another man she no longer needed now that her climb to power was complete.

_Thank you, Jaime_ , Brienne says, and he knows he is a fool.

 

* * *

 

He is driving, and Brienne beside him, and Sansa and Jon and Myrcella all behind him, when they come across the bait.

A tower that sways in the wind. Thin and spindly, as if its architect only cared about making it as tall as possible. There are high dunes around it, and Jaime has been an imperator for long enough to know that there will be men with guns hiding behind them.

There is a woman on the tower. A girl, in truth. They can see her fetters from here. She is screaming for help. Roasting in the hot sun.

“No,” he says, when Brienne looks at her. “That’s bait.”

“It is,” Sansa breathes, leaning forward. “But not for us.” She looks at Snow, and Snow nods, and Sansa squeezes his hand. “I’m going out.”

“Sansa…” Brienne starts.

“They won’t hurt me,” Sansa says.

Jaime doesn’t like it, but Snow is in the back, looking calm and unbothered, and Jaime has recognized enough of the look in the boy’s eyes to know that he wouldn’t let her go out there if he didn’t know she would be safe. Brienne is tense beside him, and he puts his metal hand out, and he puts it over the hand that fists and unfurls restlessly on her thigh. She looks over at him, her wide eyes blue and confused, and he tries for a reassuring smile. He’s not sure if it works.

Sansa is shouting up to the girl in the tower, but her voice hardly carries over the sound of the rig. Myrcella is as anxious as Brienne, and it’s odd to be calm about it. Jaime doesn’t think he has ever been the calm one before.

He hears snatches of the Stark girl’s words. _Daughter of Catelyn and Ned Stark_. _The Red Wolf. Sister of the Young Wolf. Wife to be of the Dragon._ She speaks grandly in a way that reminds him of Cersei, but he can see the shakiness of her limbs, and he knows that she is frightened.

Who better to channel when you are frightened than a woman who must seem like she fears nothing?

Jaime remembers the way Cersei used to weep and cling to him when they were young, when he was whole, when she had nothing. She would beg him to save her. She would beg him to stop their father from letting Rhaegar use her for what he wanted.

He couldn’t. He could only give her parts of himself. As many parts as she wanted. It was the only thing he could do, and he gave her everything.

The girl on the tower stands, and she lets out a wolf’s cry, cupping her small face in equally small hands. She swings down on a rope, just like Tormund had done, because all of these people outside the Citadel are as mad as each other, apparently. She hits the sand running, and then she leaps into Sansa’s arms, and both girls are crying.

Snow bursts from the backseat, and he runs through the sand to reach them. When the girl spots him, she screams, and she leaps from Sansa to him.

“Jon!” she yells. “Jon!” Over and over again as Sansa sobs.

The high dunes around them are filled, suddenly, with people in patchwork outfits, with patchwork weapons. Some of them are red-faced from the sun, others tanned and leathery, and all of them wear the symbol of the wolf. There are men, he was right about that, but most of them are women. Dozens and dozens of armed, capable, wolfish women.

Out in front is a woman he remembers well. Less delicately pretty than she was when they were both young, but beautiful in a stately way that reminds him that Cersei isn’t the only noble woman who deserves power.

Catelyn Stark runs to her daughters. She does not bother with dignity or hiding her emotions. She wails and clutches them to her chest. Her son, with his curly red hair, does the same. Pulling Sansa into his arms and spinning her around. They could be twins for how tall Sansa is, and Jaime looks at them and sees what he and his sister could have been, if they loved each other the way the gods had intended.

“You’ve kept your promise,” he says. He looks at Brienne. She’s crying. Silent, fat sobs, tears falling from her eyes. She’s _proud_. She should be. “You’ve brought the Stark girl home.”


	4. A Good Man

Aerys Targaryen’s daughter is a beautiful girl. Young, with a fresh face and piercing eyes. The first thing Jaime thinks when he looks at her is that she’s lucky she wasn’t still in The Citadel when Cersei came to power.

She’s been here instead, living in the desert, raising this community made mostly of women. Bolstered by the support of Catelyn Stark and Olenna Tyrell.

She watches Sansa Stark with her family, and she watches Margaery Tyrell with hers, and Jaime can see her wondering what it must be like to have a family like that. Loving and supportive. Their words all run into each other and blend and dance around each other, like a language that she can’t understand. Jaime doesn’t much understand it either. Much as he loved Tyrion, and much as he loved Cersei, that love was always on equal footing with something else. With Tyrion, it was a mingling of sympathy and a desperation to protect him from a world that wanted him dead. With Cersei, it was a blend of adoration and lust, and now it’s hollow.

Jaime was once a man who lived only for his family, and now he realizes that he has no idea what that even means.

Brienne stands beside him as they watch the reunions. She hovers. Lingers. He has no desire to send her away from him, but he wonders at it. Does she still not trust him? Does she think that he cannot be allowed out of her sight?

He understands once they’re herded to the war room.

 

* * *

 

The Targaryen girl’s war room is a tent constructed out of some kind of beaten and tanned animal skin, and there is a table in the center of it. A map. There are pieces carved to represent people, family houses, towns and cities. The pieces are carved poorly, childlike, and he wonders if she made them herself.

She stands at the head of it. Her chin is raised. Her eyes linger over everyone. Catelyn Stark is the only one who seems able to meet her eye.

_What is she like_? He’d asked Catelyn earlier, outside. She’d shown him to the tent that was to be his own while they waited to see if he would be allowed to stay or if he would be made to pay further for his crime of killing Aerys.

Catelyn had looked at him, and he had seen the truth before she spoke.

_She is fierce_ , Catelyn had said. _She fancies herself a warrior._

_Is she?_

_She does not live by any code_.

An ominous thing to say about a woman who claimed to be the rightful queen.

He can sense that Daenerys tries to meet his eyes, but he makes sure that they are lowered.

_You killed her fucking father_ , Tyrion’s voice reminds him. _She could kill you and not even Myrcella would be able to argue with it_.

His daughter is lurking behind him somewhere, staying quiet and out of sight as he suggested she should. It will be better if Daenerys doesn’t realize who she is until they’re sure what she’s going to do to him.

“We have an opportunity,” Daenerys says. She speaks sharply. A few people around the table flinch. The woman at her side, with her darker skin and her beautiful curls, only lifts her chin higher. She is the only one not afraid of the woman who calls herself The Dragon Queen.

“We have our children back,” Catelyn Stark says smoothly. “The Citadel cannot hurt us now.”

“I want my throne,” Daenerys says.

Jaime watches her. It is a relief that he doesn’t see the same madness that he saw in her father’s eyes, but he sees the entitlement that he has lately seen in his sister’s. He sees the same fervent belief in her righteousness that he used to see in Tywin’s face. She does not want to rule to make things _better_ for people. Perhaps she has convinced herself that that’s the reason for all of it, but Jaime knows better. Likely she _will_ improve things at the Citadel, but it will be incidental. She wants to rule because she thinks it is her right, and she thinks that she _deserves_ it for being born to a dynasty, and that is not someone that he can support on the throne.

But he is a one-handed imperator. He is the brother of the traitor queen. He is the Kingslayer who killed her father. The fact that his head is still attached to his shoulders is a minor fucking miracle. He does not say anything.

Brienne looks at him across the table, and he can tell that she is thinking the same thing. He shakes his head, and she nods grimly.

It is not their place to choose who leads for them. It will be their place to survive the consequences when it’s over.

 

* * *

 

His stomach is in knots when the sun begins to go down. He thinks of his sister when they were younger and she was so afraid. She was being used for her body, for her beauty, and there was nothing he could do to help her except give her every part of himself. He would have given her even more, if he could. He may have cut off his hand himself if she’d asked him to.

He thinks of Daenerys and Catelyn Stark and the plans they are even now making to take the Citadel by force. They have three enormous war rigs and actual flying machines and hundreds of fighters with weapons. Guns and swords and knives. Brienne and the other girls have offered up information on Citadel defenses, in exchange for things. Myrcella to prove that she and her father are not going try to stop Daenerys to defend Cersei. Margaery for the promised safety of her elder brother Willas, still on the Council. Sansa for the safety of Snow, who has agreed to give up his claim to the throne in exchange for his life. Jaime does not know what Brienne has asked for, but he imagines it was probably something annoyingly selfless, because that is her way.

She comes to him when the stars are out. She finds him leaning against his rig. His breathing is fast and hard, and the edges of his vision are going slightly black, and she grabs his stump to steady him.

“What is it?” she asks.

“I can’t,” he says. “I _can’t_.”

“Why not?”

“She’s going to burn them all.”

“Which queen?” Brienne asks, and there is something savage in her voice.

“Either. Both. They’re going to burn each other to ash, and all of those people, and _Tyrion_ …”

Brienne nods, and she grips the collar of his shirt. She pulls him into an awkward hug.

“Daenerys has three strong war rigs,” she says. “She has too many people who fight for her. Your sister will be dead by the end of the first day.”

Jaime pulls away, and he wraps his arms around himself, and he closes his eyes.

“I should be with her,” he says. “We are meant to leave this world together, as we entered it.”

“ _Why_?” she asks. He looks at her. Her eyes are blue even in the darkness. They burn into the heart of him. She shakes his stump, clutching it tightly. He remembers the way she’d touched it in the hot spring. He remembers how soft she had been. She isn’t soft now. She is desperate. “Why should you die for her sins?”

“They’re our sins,” he says.

“They’re not.”

“We are one soul.”

“You are not.”

They stare at each other, and Jaime feels his resolve beginning to crumble.

He kisses her.

She pulls back, and she shoves him away. His back hits the side of the rig, and it jars him awake, but it does not deter him. He tries to kiss her again, but she stops him with a hand on his chest. He cannot push past it; she is stronger.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“You aren’t thinking straight. You want anyone to replace her, because you know no one will, and you’ve chosen the nearest person.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“It’s dark enough. You might even be able to pretend I’m not hideous to you.”

“You aren’t hideous to me. I’d have fucked you in the hot spring if I thought you’d let me.”

She stares at him. He can see her trying to figure out if he’s lying. He isn’t.

She opens the door to the rig, and she grabs his shirt, and she pulls him forward, into a kiss. He thinks of that red-haired giant, Tormund. _Gods love a big woman_. He doesn’t want to resist, wouldn’t even dream of it, but the fact that he _couldn’t_ …

He goes with her eagerly, kissing her with hunger, pressing himself up on his toes like he remembers Cersei having to do with him, once. He makes noisy, needy sounds in the back of his throat, and he would feel ashamed if he wasn’t so fucking desperate.

They climb into the rig together, and she straddles him in the passenger seat. She kisses him with a clumsiness that tells him that she hasn’t done it before, but with a passion that tells him that she has _wanted_ to. He hasn’t done this since he lost his hand, and he finds that he is frustrated, trying to grip her back, trying to lift off her shirt, but he can’t. His stump is useless, and he is useless, and he is old and broken and not nearly half the man he used to be. He pulls away, and he wants to shout at her to get off him, but he doesn’t, because it’s not her fault, because he knows that the real target of his ire should be _him_.

She sees the look on his face, and she grabs it in both hands.

“Touch me,” she orders. He does. He doesn’t think of resisting. He tries to undo the fastenings on her pants with his left hand, and she takes his stump and places it on the side of her thigh, and she holds it there, and she makes eye contact with him.

“ _Touch_ me,” she says again, and he really _could_ cry, for how she’s looking at him. Gods, but she knows exactly what he needs, doesn’t she?

He kisses her everywhere he can reach. She makes deft work of his shirt, and she throws it into the back of the cab. He laughs at her eagerness, and he kisses down the column of her throat as she unties her shirt and throws it along with his. She doesn’t have a very womanly shape, but he has never cared less. He kisses her breasts all the same, and he traces the subtle curve of her hip with his stump, and he feels the hard muscles of her stomach jumping and shivering under his touch.

Cersei was soft. Cersei smelled of flowers and spice. Cersei was always ready for him, and she was always beautiful. Brienne isn’t Cersei. Brienne _isn’t Cersei_ , and he has never wanted to weep from joy before, but he nearly does when she reaches one strong hand into his pants and takes hold of him.

“Brienne,” he breathes. “ _Brienne_.”

The cab of the rig is not designed for this. It is awkward, and she bumps into gearshifts in her haste to shrug out of her pants, and he fumbles and tries to help her, but he’s clumsy with his missing hand and also with his desire, the way it shoots through his entire body.

She sinks onto him with a satisfied sigh. She hardly even flinches, though he can feel a tension as if she expects it to hurt. She is wet and hot around him, and he buries his face in her shoulder to keep from moving too quickly. His hand and stump together trace up her spine, feeling the ridges of it.

“You will be leaving tonight,” she says, beginning to move. Her knees are planted on either side of him, and she has trapped him here inside her, and he looks up at her as she rolls her hips as best as she can in this too-small space. He should have insisted that they ride out to the desert, that they do this under the stars somewhere so that he could be as gentle and sweet as she deserves, but he never would have made it. He feels as if he wanted her for years.

“Brienne,” he says.

“You think you have to leave,” she continues, as if he is not inside her.

“Brienne,” he says again, an apology and a groan intermingled.

“I will be going with you,” she says. He cannot kiss her. She is too far above him, gripping the handle above the passenger door for leverage. He kisses every bit of skin that he can. Her chest. Her throat. Her shoulders. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this. I shouldn’t be doing this_.

She topples first, and he feels everything in his entire body when she does, because she clenches around him, and he follows her. He is ten years younger. Fifteen. He has a hand again, all ten fingers. Everything is perfect.

It fades, as everything does, and his back hurts and his legs are going a bit numb from the weight of her, and his hand is still gone.

He looks up at her, and she stares down at him. She is unforgiving in the after.

“I will be coming with you,” she says.

“Brienne, I…”

“You are a good man. You will not be dying with her,” she says. Jaime has always bowed to a powerful woman, has always worshipped a powerful woman, and so it feels right to nod, to agree, to promise.

 

* * *

 

They detach the rig from the cabin, and they drive.

 

* * *

 

Brienne first, and then Jaime, and then Brienne again.

They did not tell anyone that they were leaving, and he knows that they will be branded for traitors if they’re caught by Daenerys and her army, but Brienne is not concerned, and so Jaime pretends not to be concerned as well. He will tell them that this was _his_ doing. He will tell them that he held a knife to her throat and forced her to drive. He will tell them anything to keep her safe.

_You poor, deluded fool_ , says Tyrion’s voice in his head, and Jaime quiets it. _Do you really think she’ll let you touch her again? She took what she wanted from you, because she knew you were going to do something worthless, in the end._

He thinks of Cersei shaming him out of her rooms. The disgust on her face when she’d touched his stump. He thinks of Brienne moving his wrist to her thigh and holding it there. Giving him permission. _Demanding_ that he use both hands to touch her.

_I am a fool_ , he thinks, but he is a fool gladly for a woman such as Brienne.

 

* * *

 

When they reach the Citadel, the lift is lowered for them immediately. Brienne looks at him, and he nods.

They get out of the cabin.

Brienne’s hands are tied together, and she trusts him. She let him tie her. She _helped_ him tie her. She let him take away her strength. He is sweating. He has this feeling like if Cersei asked, or if Tyrion asked, he would hand Brienne over without question.

He doesn’t think that’s true. He doesn’t actually expect that to happen. But still. It sits in him and makes him sick and makes him come close to panicking again.

Brienne watches him. She watches the way his hand shakes. And yet she does not ever look as though she doesn’t trust him. She has faith in him. Is it deserved? He can hardly say, although he has a feeling that the answer is no.

_You would do anything for Cersei_. Tyrion’s voice. Disgusted. But Brienne’s, softer. _You will not be dying with her._

She has offered him the possibility of an after, and the possibility of absolution, and he does not know if he wants either of those things. Ever since he lost his hand, he has felt that the kindest thing would be for him to die and leave the world alone. The world does not need a crippled Kingslayer. The world does not need a man who fucked his own sister and still could find it in his heart to love her even after she had proven herself to be a monster.

But with Brienne he sees a different man. A better man. He sees the possibility of driving with her for miles in the desert, of helping the people of the Citadel with her. He sees possibilities for a different life. A better life. One where he does not have to lie awake and dread the morning.

She stares at him. He stares back. Her big eyes do not damn him. They do not plead with him, because they do not believe they need to. They trust him.

_Touch me_ , she had demanded, and he had.

 

* * *

 

Cersei has them both escorted to her chambers. They’re large and roomy, with a balcony out front that has a dazzling view that shows how high up they are here, above the commons.

He used to imagine fucking her in this room. His imaginings were impossible and more romantic than any of their past couplings. His hand had grown back in them, and she welcomed him gladly, clasping him to her and whispering his name in his ear as he undressed her. No _hurry up, Jaime_ , or _I think I hear someone coming_. They were allowed to take their time. She was queen, and no one would enter her rooms without leave. And even if they were found, who would complain? Who would have anything to say if the queen fucked her brother in the bed that once belonged to Aerys?

They never fucked in this room, because by the time she was installed in it, a queen standing on her own, he was maimed and useless, and her eyes were only filled with scorn, and her whispers were only so that he would do her bidding in whatever way she wished.

He loved his sister. _He loves his sister still_. But he knows, he knows. She has not returned the favor in quite some time. It’s power she loves. Power and safety and the iron-clad certainty of being here, high up above the commons, where no one can hurt her. Maybe if he had been born the maid, he would feel the same, but he wasn’t, and he doesn’t. Even losing his hand and becoming weak in a way that he never was when he was whole hasn’t been enough to make him crave power the way she does.

Then again, it has not been his whole life. It has been _Cersei’s_. She has never tasted the power that he had once just by virtue of being born a man in a world that valued _that_ above all else.

She bids Brienne to kneel once they’re in the room, and Brienne does. She sits back on her heels, waiting, and he thinks of the way she’d straddled him in the cabin of the truck, and now he’s thinking back on her desperation and the eager way she’d gasped and moved above him, and he’s wondering if she thought that it was the only chance she was going to get.

“Brother,” Cersei says, and he forces a smile in her direction that feels weighed down. “I knew you would win.”

“It took some doing, sister, as you might imagine,” he says. He tries to remember how he spoke to her in the past, but he cannot conjure it. Only wounded, hurt pride. She pouts in his direction to hear it.

“And yet you have been successful. Though they tell me that the girls are still missing. Were you too late to save them?”

“The girls are safe,” Brienne says. He glares at her. Brienne does not look at him. She looks at Cersei. “With their families. Where they belong.”

“My daughter?”

“Your daughter begged me to take her away from you.”

Cersei strides across the room and strikes Brienne hard. The back of her hand, with its beautiful rings, slices up the side of Brienne’s face. Brienne hardly even blinks.

“Where is our brother?” Jaime asks, suddenly desperate to be under Cersei’s eye. He was desperate for that for most of the past few years, but now it’s different. _Just keep your eyes on me. Just look at me. Don’t pay attention to her. She means nothing to either of us! We are all that matters so please don’t hurt her._

“Where is _our daughter_?” Cersei demands, whirling on him. “Where has she taken Myrcella, Jaime?”

“To Catelyn Stark,” Jaime answers. “And Aerys Targaryen’s daughter. And they are coming here.”

Brienne doesn’t react to this; he feels as if he has betrayed her anyway. But surely she must have known he was going to tell.

“ _Here_?” Cersei asks. “For _what_?”

“The throne. Your head. _My_ head. Take your pick. Daenerys has as strong an appetite for power as you did. Where is Tyrion?”

“He’s in the cells,” Cersei says, dismissing the thought of their little brother with the wave of a hand. “I don’t give a _fuck_ about Tyrion. Where are they coming from? How much firepower do they have? The Citadel cannot be taken.”

The Dragon Queen. She has flying machines. She has war rigs. The Citadel _will_ be taken.

Jaime shrugs.

“She aims to take it anyway. She may be as mad as her father, or she may just be as stupid as her brother. Either way, she’s coming. You’ll have a war on your hands. And there are a _lot_ of people with her. You should flee, now, before she comes.”

“No,” Cersei says. He sighs.

“Cersei…”

“Losing your hand has made you weak, Jaime. I will not abandon our home. I will not abandon my _throne_.”

“The Dragon Queen is coming, and she brings death with her,” Jaime says.

“I have death with me right here,” Cersei replies. She holds her hand to the side, and Jaime realizes that The Mountain has been standing there, watching them, all this time, like furniture in the corner of the room. Brienne sizes him up. Jaime feels his heart begin to pound in a way that tells him he is very close to panicking.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I was thinking I’d order Gregor to throw this cow out the window so we can begin preparations for the war that’s _apparently_ coming,” Cersei says dryly.

No. That can’t be allowed to happen.

Jaime moves without thinking, and he pulls his knife from its scabbard at his hip, and he brings it down on Brienne’s bindings. She stands immediately, and she tries to take it.

“You’re not _fighting_ him,” Jaime says, aghast at the thought. “Go and get Tyrion.”

“Stop her,” Cersei says calmly. The Mountain strides forward.

Brienne wants to fight him. Jaime can see it in the tense line of her body and in the way she eyes him like she eyed Jaime when he foolishly tried to stand against her after she had taken out his war boys. But she’s clever, Brienne. She sees Gregor’s size and his deadened eyes, and she sees the way Jaime is shaking his head at her, and she gives him one last agonized look, and she flees.

He hears people in the hallway trying to stop her, but he knows she will take them out. Gregor lumbers after her, but Jaime has to believe that he will not catch her.

Cersei moves as if to stop him before he can follow, but he does not _want_ to follow.

Or, rather, he does, but he won’t.

“I don’t know what it is that compels me to try and save your stubborn life,” he says. Cersei is anguished as she looks at him, and he knows that there is a war in her between the girl she used to be and the woman she has become in her quest for power. She remembers those early days as well as he does. He _knows_ she’s thinking of it. Remembering their softness for each other.

“It’s because you love me,” she says, and he nods. “It’s because we were meant to be together.”

“I believed that, once, you know. I really did. I thought there was nothing that could tear us apart. No one who could come between us. No hardship we could not endure. I loved you to the exclusion of almost everyone and everything in the world.”

“Loved,” Cersei says, and her voice is iron. Jaime holds up his hand, and he quirks an eyebrow, his expression going grim and satisfied when she has to look away.

“Yes,” he says. “That’s what I thought.”

“Jaime,” she says, almost but not quite pleading, and he knows that she doesn’t quite know what to say. She could not admit aloud that the sight of his imperfection disgusts her. She believes herself divine, and she believed them divine together, once, but now he has to wonder if even then she hated and resented him for the power he so carelessly wielded. He cannot blame her for it, and he wishes she would listen to him now.

“Daenerys Targaryen will win the Citadel. She has our daughter, and even if she didn’t, Myrcella would choose to leave. What you were going to do to those girls…”

“It was no worse than what was done to me.”

“Then why not _change_ it?” Jaime pleads. “Save girls like you from having to go through what you did.”

Cersei scoffs.

“Weak,” she says.

“You don’t mean that.”

“No?”

“You cannot truly be so heartless. You have been, been corrupted. Warped. That’s what power does. It did it to Aerys.”

“Is that what this is, then?” Cersei asks, suddenly calm. “You come to deliver the justice you delivered to the Mad King?” She steps closer, and she bears her throat for him. “Wrap your hand around my throat. You only have the one, so it might take a little longer.”

“I came back to _save_ you,” Jaime says. “Because I thought you deserved a fucking chance!”

“How magnanimous of you, brother,” Cersei sneers. Closer still, her throat still bared. Jaime tries to clench his first in his right hand, forgetting that it’s gone.

“Stop it,” he says.

There are alarms ringing, now. Loud, clamoring, bells and whistles and gongs from throughout the Citadel. It isn’t just Brienne making her way to the cells. It’s something else.

“She’s here,” Cersei says. She walks past Jaime, brushing past him, smelling of flowers and spice, as always. She stands in the window and she watches as the war rigs approach, throwing up dust in the distance. She uses her spyglass to watch them, and he watches her shoulders slacken when she sees the flying machines that Daenerys has built.

Majestic, unwieldly, terrifying. They’re great beasts with bombs and bullets, and they’re going to kill everyone in the Citadel if Cersei tries to fight back. He moves to stand beside her, and they watch the approach for a little while. There is nothing else to do.

“Cersei, please,” he says. Surely she must understand, now. Surely she must see!

The worst part is that he _does_ understand her. He does know her. Nothing she is saying or doing is so far removed from the girl he loved that he can’t follow it. This world is a poison to people like her. Their father, Aerys, Rhaegar, Robert Baratheon…on and on, choking the love out of her until there was only the bare _need_ inside her for power because power was the only way to keep herself and her children safe. _I understand_! He wants to scream it to her, but he cannot find the strength. _I know who you are, and I am trying to save you because of it!_

“I will be staying here until the end,” Cersei says. She turns to look at him, and he can see the certainty in her eyes. “Will you be staying with me, brother?”

There are tears in her eyes. Yes, she is scared. He feels his heart ache for her fear, because he spent most of his early days trying to save her from that.

“You can _go_ ,” he says, but she shakes her head. She holds out her hand.

“Are you staying with me?” she asks.

He goes to her. He wraps his arms around her. He hugs her. He can feel the rumble of the machines approaching, and he knows that soon the entire Citadel will be collapsing into dust.

“No,” he says. She holds him tighter, and he feels her sob against his chest, but she shows no sign of it when she finally pulls away.

“We were meant to leave this world together,” she says. Her eyes are glassy and red, but they do not spill tears, like even the water of her eyes is too proud.

“I really did believe that, once,” he says.

There are a million more words that both of them could say. He can see it in her eyes. She wonders about Brienne, about Myrcella, about what happened to him in the several days in which he has been gone. He left a man desperate for her love and returned a man who had found a purpose in something else and someone else. He still doesn’t know exactly who that man is, and he still doesn’t know exactly how he’s going to survive the wrath of Daenerys Targaryen, but he knows now that he was never fated to die with his sister. That was only ever a dream.

He’s halfway across the room, backing away, still watching his sister, when he hears footsteps behind him. He turns. Brienne is there, covered in blood, her eyes standing out blue and strong amongst the gore.

“Your Mountain is dead,” she tells Cersei in that deep, patient voice of hers. She looks at Jaime. “Are you coming? Or are you staying?”

He doesn’t answer. He gives one last searching look at Cersei, who is still framed in light by the window. He will remember her like this, he knows, and it will grieve him. He was so close to being able to save her.

“Let’s go,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Tyrion has stolen them a car, and they are lowered from the higher levels. The lift shakes, and dust falls from the rocks above, and there are people climbing down the ladders and sliding down ramps, trying to escape to the commons below before it’s too late. Jaime feels as if there is a string connecting he and his twin, and it grows thinner and more taut the farther down they travel. When he looks over at his little brother, bruised and bloody from his time in the cells, he feels that string snap at last. Cersei made her choices. He has made his.

“You really are an idiot,” Tyrion says to him, his voice raspy. “But you’ve found yourself quite the champion.”

Brienne is in the backseat cleaning up with a wet rag, grimacing as she tries to wipe the blood off her face.

“I’m envious you got to witness it,” Jaime admits. He tries for lighthearted, but he’s not entirely sure he succeeds. Tyrion laughs. There is a strain in all of them. They may die when they reach the ground. They may die before that. But Jaime feels a lightness he wasn’t expecting to feel: at least it will be on their terms.

“I won’t soon forget it,” Tyrion admits. “The lady Brienne is exceptionally skilled. I knew she was when I sent her to you, of course, but I never thought she’d be able to take down The Mountain. You, certainly. But the Mountain? With her help, we may survive this dragon queen yet.”

“We will,” Brienne says. She doesn’t sound concerned. Jaime locks eyes with her in the rearview mirror, and she smiles. The lift hits the ground, and Jaime starts the car. The engine roars to life. “Take us home, Jaime,” she says.


End file.
